Drew Kemp

Drew Kemp is a pilot and flight instructor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born and raised in Berkeley, he cajoled his way into a job at the Oakland Airport and started flying at age 15 in the Champion Citabria. He soloed at 16, and then perfected a 10-minute aerobatic routine, which he demonstrated for the DPE on his checkride. Two weeks after receiving his Private, he and his 19 year old friend ferried a new 7ACA Champ from Wisconsin back to OAK by way of El Paso. Now on his third career (he was previously a roadie for some major rock & roll bands back in the ‘70s, then had a 30 year career in engineering), you can usually find him at KOAK enjoying a free FBO cappuccino, if he’s not up torturing some poor, unsuspecting pilot. Drew is also on the Board of Directors of KidsCareEverywhere, and travels to developing countries, teaching the PEMSoft Mobile Pediatric Emergency Medicine Application to Doctors.

I asked NorCal if there were any ride reports over the mountains. “No complaints,” replied the controller. We went into the clouds about over PXN VOR. No big deal. We were just bumping along V301, in and out of the clouds at first, then solid IMC. In the clouds it was just light chop, and my little Piper pretty much just flew herself, even without an autopilot. Then the world suddenly went mad.

No more than 10 or 15 seconds had elapsed since getting airborne. We had just passed the departure end of Runway 07, and were climbing through about 100 ft. AGL. I was just about to make the turn to 050 then bring the gear up, when the plane made a violent lurch to the left, and we were suddenly descending very quickly despite the airspeed and nose up pitch.

Just after Hollister had passed under the left wing, the transponder flashed an error message, and went from their assigned squawk code to 1200. “Huh?” says the instructor, “What’s up with that?” The instructor tried to enter the assigned squawk code a couple more times, with the same result. That was exactly when the wheels fell off the cart, electrically speaking.

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